Saturday, 10 May 2014

The demise of innovation and creativity

I am on the final leg of what ended up being a very eventful trip back home. Looking out of the window, while the crew is finalizing the boarding procedures I see these ads:

"We invest in sustainable future and sustainable partnerships"

"We understand the value chain from A to Z and the ppl who keep it moving"

Reading them made me realize that now a days innovation and creativity are rare commodities....

Think about it, how many brands you know carry the same messages as these ones and how many advocate for the same things? I am sure you will come up with quite a few. And I am also equally sure that the brands you came up with belong to different sectors.

These particular ads belong to a bank, but they could easily be those of an NGO, a development organization, be it a multilateral, bilateral or for that matter an international financial institution or a supermarket chain.

This all made me reflect that today, more than ever, it is a challenge to create a brand proposition that stands out and is unique. Only a few succeed and when they do, it is because they have something unique and outstanding to "sell".

When that is not case, we end up with more of the same, which then means a lot of noise and we end up either getting deaf, or not hearing anything at all.

Some end up justifying their copy-cat syndrome by calling it replicating or scaling up......

All of these fancy terms to justify lack of ideas and innovations and adopt a cookie cutter approach which brings about conformity and kills diversity.

Bless the few innovators and geniuses that are around. May you be given the necessary space to spread out your wings and create something unique.

May the world churn out more innovators who are bold, take risks, rock the boat and advocate for business as unusual. I want to sign up with them and be part of their agenda.